Abstract: The modern Yellow River delta is composed of several lobes. The Diaokou lobe was the one occurred during 1964—1976 and has been abandoned since 1976. With the support of relatively complete historical records of the period, Landsat-TM satellite remote-sensing images were used to identify the shoreline and river channel between 1976 and 2011. The result shows that the coastline changes can be divided into five stages from bay infilling and coast straightening-rapid silting-quick retrogradation up to slow retrogradation; and the river channel changed correspondingly from overflow filling-estuary advancing-single channel straightening-breaching up to abandonment.